Although not everybody is happy to acknowledge it, John Williams is likely the most popular American composer of classical music alive today. Is any summer pops season complete without an evening devoted to Williams’ exciting, varied film scores?
The San Francisco Symphony winds up its Summer and the Symphony series with a jaunt through the Williams canon, with a few nods to his compatriots — Maurice Jarre’s sweeping, Orientalist theme to David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia — and his teachers and forerunners, Bernard Herrmann and Wolfgang Korngold. This is some of the most sophisticated and brilliantly orchestrated movie music ever.